


Five Things Kaylee Frye Can't Fix

by Dolevalan



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, Major Character Injury, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-09
Updated: 2007-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-04 06:49:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4128775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolevalan/pseuds/Dolevalan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things break beyond even Kaylee's talents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Things Kaylee Frye Can't Fix

**One**

When her father found her, she was on the edge of tears. “Now, now sugarplum.” He lifted her with his callused hands and rocked her. “What’s it that’s troubling you?”  
  
“I killed it, Daddy,” the little girl sniffled. “It won’t come back for me, it just sits there and I didn’t _mean_ to and now I can’t…”  
  
“Ssh, ssh.” He put a hand to her soft hair, and wiped a bit of grit off her cheek with his thumb. Glancing down at the small toy on the floor, he murmured, “Sometimes things break beyond fixing, darlin. Ain’t your fault.” And he held her while she cried, not for the toy, but for the first thing in her young life she couldn't set back to rights.  
  


**Two**

“I’ll work more shifts. I can do that. Get my hands on more things – everyone knows I’m the best one to come to for broken machines, ain’t bragging, just the truth. It’ll be - ”  
  
“Kaylee, honey, it won’t matter.” Her father looked old and tired, looking around his shop.  
  
Her brother spoke up, surly as ever, to add “Some men don’t like their junk fixed by a slip of a girl ain’t half out of pigtails yet.”  
  
“ _Gôu pì_ , fixin’ is fixin’.”  
  
“Language, honey,” he father said in the same tone. “It’s no one’s fault. The shop’s just failing is all. Things have a time they’re meant to be dyin’. We’ll get by.” Kaylee opened her mouth to protest, but her father just repeated, quietly, “We’ll get by.”

 

 **Three**  
  
The dress had been her mother’s, and it was the shiniest thing she’d ever seen. Had been. But it wasn’t her fault that a brawl broke out at a country dance, with her right there in the thick of it.  
  
But fault didn’t matter now that she examined the long gash in the fine, green material, dismayed. Shaking, she picked up a needle and thread, but she knew in her heart the dress would never really be pretty again. She willed her eyes not to blurring as she started to make do as best she could.

 

 **Four**  
  
“Are you and the cap’n ever gonna talk about things?” she asked one day, as Inara brushed out her hair. She loved Inara brushing her hair; it felt like she could charm it into ordered shininess.  
  
“What things?” Inara asked with half a laugh.  
  
“About you and the cap’n.” Kaylee tried to turn to look at her, but Inara firmly held her head in place.  
  
“I have no idea what you mean, Kaylee.” Inara’s voice was light, but her brush strokes were a bit firmer. “I don’t see what you imagine there is to talk about.” And the subject was gently but firmly closed. Kaylee frowned, trying to resign herself to the fact that they didn’t want things fixed.

 

 **Five**  
  
He was bleeding. There was blood, too much blood, it was getting everywhere – on his nice clean clothes, on the (substantially less clean) deck, on her hands as she tried to push it back in, futilely. The captain was shouting something and Zoë was running up to tell Wash where to take them, but none of it mattered because there was a hole in Simon.  
  
“We’re gonna get you patched up, _ài rén_ ,” she said, trying to pretend he was one of Serenity’s engines busted up, the shake in her voice betraying how badly it was working. He smiled and touched her cheek, weakly, with the opposite arm. Both hand and cheek were wet, but with different things.  
  
And Kaylee knew, even while refusing to listen to the part of her that knew, that broken things couldn’t patch themselves.  
  
Some things break beyond fixing.


End file.
